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“Mia, we need you side stage now. You’re on in five.”
“Alright, that’s alright, I’ve just got to show Harper?—”
“No, seriously, you need to be side stage right now, this second.”
Harper’s worst fears had been confirmed. They were both in too deep, for different reasons, but it was having a negative effect on both of their careers. The stage manager took Mia gently but insistently by the elbow. As Mia was dragged side stage, Harper decided she had heard all she needed to hear for now.
“You go kill it out there. I’ll keep updating the schedule but I think I get the message.” Harper nodded at her, as she slowly moved away.
She knew she needed to take a step back from this. Harper was getting upset, frustrated that Mia couldn’t see how hurtful it was that she had been left in the dark. She didn’t even attempt to apologize or explain herself. This is not a feeling she liked, wanted or needed. Harper Nightingale is renowned for being in control of everything, including her emotions. She couldn’t let this take over her anymore.
If this is the way she wants things to work, then that’s the way they’ll work. That’s what Harper decided. She heard Mia calling for her as she was dragged side stage.
“Harper! Harper, please stay!”
Hopefully she would figure it out. She turned around and left.
11
Ten days. It had been ten days since Mia had any contact with Harper at all. In fact, she had walked out on her at a show and hadn’t seen her since.
At another photoshoot—god, she was sick to death of photoshoots—she tried to look as though she wasn’t always looking around for somebody she knew. She had been posed in a stylish but screaming-tight PVC ensemble, and she learned quickly that not every stylist was as receptive to requests as Eli from MusicLife had been, so smiling and shutting her mouth was the order of the day.
She had been busy, and as much as she loved her new friends, she missed the cozy, welcoming atmosphere of the Indigo Lounge. She missed Esme and her fantastical drinks specials. She missed Ruby, her presence in the corner a welcome constant. She missed her room upstairs; she had been sleeping in hotels more often than her own bed and it was really getting to her. She missed having somewhere she could go and just exist in privacy. She missed Deborah, her infinite wisdom and wise-cracking and support. She missed real people.
She missed Harper.
She really missed Harper. The sense of safety she felt around her. The experience she knew Harper had served as a compass in situations where Mia didn’t know what to do. Her guide and her companion in it all. She didn’t know whoever this Huntress was, she only knew her Harper, who squeezed her hand and kissed her and smelled of roses and irises, oud lingering on her collarbones as the base note of her new signature perfume. Her Harper, who was quick to annoy but even quicker to melt and always, always had time for Mia.
The photographer asked her to make a “moody face” while hunched over in the chair they had sat her in, and as camera flashes went off in a halo around her head she knew one thing.
This was her fault. It really was. She had gotten too caught up in the parties and the networking and the 70 new contacts in her phone and, sure, she had 70 new contacts in her phone, but she hadn’t texted Harper once. Harper had kept on organizing new things for her, and Mia had kept showing up, but the only time she saw her she didn’t speak a word. The rising fame and stardom were taking over her soul. Something she always dreamed of so quickly became toxic.
A few days later, during a break in a slot on local radio, she briefly wondered why she had expected Harper to come to everything she was doing. Harper had other clients who she had been working with for a decade, one client in particular who she had known for twenty years. She was not new to this game at all.
A horrible thought crossed her mind: Did Harper do this with all of her clients?
Was the wining and dining, the affection, the promises of power in the industry all a ploy to keep her cut of whatever money Mia made? She dismissed the worry nearly as soon as she thought of it. Whatever was happening, however Harper was feeling, Mia knew that the connection that they had was real. However it ended (and this thought upset her further, because she didn’t want it to end at all) she knew that it was genuine.
At a break in a recording session with her band, who she had nicknamed los cuates because they called each other “my guy” all the time, she couldn’t get her mind off of Harper at all. The worst part of the whole situation, she thought, was that Harper was officially out of office.
At the end of every email update Mia got, there was a message attached at the end that stated that she was out of the country until the end of the month. If Mia was just able to talk to Harper, to apologize, maybe the distance between them wouldn’t feel as cold. She knew things wouldn’t be the same as they were, and the thought killed her, but she supposed she would rather have Harper in her life in only one way than not have her at all.
Instead of Harper, Mia had to get anything she would normally need from Carson, one of the assistants at the label. Carson was... fine, Mia supposed. He was always asking her for details about the bookings she had, even though he was the one giving her the information on Harper’s behalf. She had absolutely worked with worse people. She really had no right to complain, but she was surprised at his complete lack of tact. Worst of all, he would ask her for gossip about people she had only bumped into once or twice. That seemed really unprofessional, and it was absolutely the kind of thing she would warn Harper about, if she could get in contact with her.
As the days went on and Mia was shuffled from interview to the studio to a photoshoot back to the studio, she began feeling completely helpless. She had no control over her own schedule, and any time she mentioned she might need to take time off to Carson he just laughed down the phone at her and told her Harper had filled out the schedule completely. She was able to call her family back home in Spain less and less, and while they had told her they were watching her interviews they still wanted to hear about any good news Mia had from her. She really missed speaking to her mom, too. She’d say something wise about the situation and then call a carousel a horse tornado or make a bad sex joke and Mia would be able to laugh and laugh.
She wouldn’t say horse tornado, actually. Her mom had sent Mia a video where a fellow Spanish-speaking lesbian said that was something her mom would say. Sheltering in a bathroom stall for a moment of quiet in the middle of a press day, Mia pulled the video up and allowed herself to laugh in order to keep from crying. Then, she scrolled down and saw a post from Harper.
She was in Florence. She had flown all the way to Italy without so much as a goodbye, and now Mia was crying in a bathroom stall in a TV studio.
How could she do this to me?
This was exactly what she had asked Harper not to do. This was exactly what Harper had promised not to do.
She needed to speak to her.
Right now, fuck the time difference.
